Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, expelling some staff and displacing people before withdrawing, with the bodies of people killed in airstrikes strewn across the streets, its director said.
The attack began with a series of airstrikes on the western and northern sides of Kamal Adwan, accompanied by intense gunfire, hospital director Hussam Abu Safiyeh said, speaking via an online chat room, Reuters reported.
He said troops who entered the hospital ordered all staff, patients and displaced people to enter its courtyard before allowing them back inside hours later, although some staff, including an Indonesian emergency surgery team, and some displaced people were ordered to leave the premises permanently.
The Gaza Civil Defense Agency said 29 people were killed and dozens wounded in Israeli shelling in northern Gaza on Friday, “especially around Kamal Adwan.”
AFP reported that four hospital staff were among the dead, citing Abu Safiyeh. Al Jazeera television said it had verified footage of Israeli forces firing at a Palestine Red Crescent ambulance outside the hospital.
The Israeli military on Friday denied claims that it had struck or entered Kamal Adwan Hospital, saying it had operated near the facility.
“Contrary to reports the previous day, [the army] did not attack Kamal Adwan Hospital or operate there,” it said in a statement.
This week, Amnesty International released a report saying that Israel’s campaign in Gaza amounted to genocide. One of its main charges was that Israel was imposing living conditions calculated to physically destroy it, such as destroying medical infrastructure.
“This morning we were shocked to see hundreds of bodies and wounded individuals in the streets around the hospital,” Abu Safiyeh said in another statement posted online.
“The situation inside and around the hospital is catastrophic. There are a large number of dead and wounded individuals, and there are no more surgeons,” he said.
Abu Safiyeh’s 15-year-old son was killed in an Israeli drone strike on the hospital in October, and his father was forced to bury him in the hospital yard.
Gaza’s health ministry said the three main hospitals in the northern end of the territory were barely functioning and had come under repeated attacks since Israel sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and nearby Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya in October.
Later on Friday, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip killed at least 18 people, including three children and two women, and wounded 30 others, doctors said.
They added that Israeli military strikes across the territory had killed at least 53 Palestinians, most of them in northern Gaza on Friday.
In a call for help on Friday, the ministry accused the Israeli military of committing a “war crime” at Kamal Adwan Hospital by committing “all forms of killing and violence in and around it”.
Photo: Twitter/ @AbujomaaGaza
